Ode to Tawes Hall

Introduction:

As most of you know, our Department is enriched by the presence of several very fine poets. One of whom has recently written a very, very fine biography. Of the very, very, very fine poet, John Keats. As Stan Plumly’s students were packing up his books and papers in preparation for the move to Tawes, one of our alert graduate students found a document misplaced underneath a huge pile of papers used by Stan in preparing his Posthumous Keats. A document clearly in Keats’ handwriting and clearly on early 19th century paper. A document obviously intended for inclusion in Stan’s book that somehow got away. A pre-“Posthumous Keats” poem. It is another of the great Keats odes, like those to a Nightingale, to Autumn, and the spectacular “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” This one legibly titled, “Ode on a REstored Tawes.” In his romantic genius, Keats anticipated our gathering here today. To mark the reopening of Tawes Hall, the splendid new home of the English Department, here in its first public reading since I heard it wafting out of a tiny garret onto the Spanish Steps in Rome in 1820: John Keats’ Ode on a REstored Tawes.

Poem:

Thou still unravished Tawes now new restoredThou foster-child of
Regents and good times,Sylvan historian, who can well expressLiter’ry
tales more sweetly than our rhymes:What hideous memories haunt
about thy shapeOf Theatre, Music, and RTVF,In Kirwan years or
days of Daniel Mote?What men or gods worked here? What maidens loth?What
mad research? What struggle to survive?What hires and firings? What
wild ecstasy?

Who
are these come to our Grand Opening?To what green altar, Theresa
and Kent,Lead thou our Nicole lowing at the skies,And with her
Shawn, Abby, Katie, Isabella?What disc’pline groups in post tenure
review,Assessment-built with delayed F.A.R,Are emptied of their
folk, this pious day?Grad students, thy pens now evermore will beFast
flowing sure; but not a soul to tellWhy thou art desolate—stipends
so low!

O attic shape! Fair altitude! High officesFor noble
men and women overworked,Groaning bookcases, ere-switched-on PCs!Thou,
silent Tawes, dost tease us from Despair,As doth a parody. Cold
Pastoral!When old ages shall this department waste,Tawes shall
remain, in midst of other woeThan ours, to tell a new department,
lesser sure,“Duty is truth, truth duty—that is allYe know in
Tawes, and all ye need to know.”